OTTAWA - New value-for-money audits to better track how Indian Affairs spends billions of dollars will catch misappropriation, lax reporting and - in rare cases - fraud, says the minister in charge.
Chuck Strahl says most First Nations properly use federal cash, much of it paid to uphold historic treaties. But more stringent assessments of the roughly $6 billion that flows through his department each year will tighten accounting and give concerned band members answers, he said in an interview.
"I'm convinced that the overwhelming majority of First Nations do the best they can with the money they've got. You could debate whether the money is adequate or not," he added. "But there's the odd one out there, just like there always is in any public government ... that needs to be called to task.
"In extreme cases, of course, somebody could be taking money out of the till and not reporting it."
Audit results "could be anything from an illegal action to simply a change in book-keeping requirements," Strahl said.
As of July 1, transfers to reserves for education, housing and other programs will contain a clause allowing Indian Affairs to later analyze whether they were well spent.
Not even the minister can currently follow up when band members accuse their chief and council of mismanagement, Strahl said.
The 19th-century Indian Act that governs most of
"So that's going to change and that's going to be of great benefit to First Nations individuals who say, you know, 'I want to hold the chief and council's feet to the fire, just like I would at city hall or ... with the federal government,"' Strahl said.
The policy shift echoes the failed First Nations Governance Act, a broader legislative attempt by the former Liberal government to tighten financial controls. Former prime minister Paul Martin, as he took the Liberal helm, abandoned the bill after months of backlash from native chiefs who said they weren't fully consulted.
Dan Wilson, special adviser to the Assembly of First Nations, says chiefs have complied for years with value-for-money clauses on federal health, heritage and social development transfers.
"It's what we do with other departments," he said, noting Indian Affairs is simply the latest to add such assessments.
"The fact that they're trying to sell this as some great new step in accountability by those nasty, corrupt chiefs is what really bothers us about this."
What amounts to an imposed policy tweak won't bridge systemic gaps that make it tough if not impossible to trace results for public cash,
The real problem is a lack of clear, adequately funded goals that can then be tracked against set benchmarks to measure progress, he said.
"The government of
"This is an archaic department that's never been structured to achieve results for First Nations.
"We have to sit down and agree about what the appropriate objectives are ... the resources for getting there, and the kind of reporting you need to make sure that's happening."
"There was some very good work done. Briefly."
If anything, native leaders say their cash-strapped communities are over-scrutinized.
Auditor General Sheila Fraser in 2002 notoriously described a "crazy quilt" of spending reports required by
"The number of actual cases where there is serious corruption or legitimate, true mismanagement ... is a very small fraction of the three per cent."